Tuesday, October 25, 2005

capitalism and socialism by Maurice Brinton

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISMMAURICE BRINTON December 1968

Introductionfrom Red StarThe following article reprinted with kind permission from thecomrades at AKPress http://www.akuk.com/ canbe found in the wonderful collection ‘For Workers Power, selected writings ofMaurice Brinton’ Edited by David Goodway ISBN1-904859-07-0.Maurice Brintonwas the pen name for Chris Pallis who died earlier this year. A revolutionarysocialist, veteran of first the wartime cpgb, then the trotskyist revolutionarycommunist party (RCP), his pursuit of a medical career put paid to politicalactivity for a number of years. Pallis was appointed to a consultants post in aLondon hospital in 1957 and this brought him back into contact with therevolutionary left, such as it was in late 50s Britain. Pallis joined the newlylaunched SLL (socialist labour league), the SLL was the largest of Britain’strotskyist groups and had benefited from the exodus from the communist partyfollowing the suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and gained anumber of talented militants and intellectuals, such as Brian Behan, brother ofthe playwright Brendan Behan and a militant in the building workers union, andPeter Fryer, The Daily Worker correspondent in Hungary who had quit when hisarticles telling the truth about the revolution were suppressed. The SLL alsomaintained Trotsky’s final predictions as gospel truth; Russia was ‘degenerated’but still ‘a workers state’ and therefore should be defended against ‘westernimperialism (in the context of the first mass movement against nuclear weaponsthis meant that UK and US bombs were bad but the ‘Workers Bomb’ was to bedefended!?!); western capitalism was in terminal crisis, mass unemployment, thatwould make the wall street crash and the great depression look like Sundayschool picnics were just around the corner, capitalism had no remedy and anymoment the ‘desperate masses’ would turn in their millions to the banner of the4th international (You have to admire, in a way, the sheer tenacity of holdingto this world view-especially as this was the middle of the greatest and mostsustained world capitalist boom in history ). The SLL was led by its founder,Gerry Healy who maintained a hot house regime of paranoia and suspicion (if thesystem was about to collapse then the forces of the state were at all timesdesperate to disrupt the activity of the ‘True Marxists’). This would all getfar worse in the late seventies and eighties when the economic crisis finallyarrived, to be greeted by the faithful in a manner akin to the second coming ofChrist, but the Masses firmly refused to rally to the banner of Gerry Healy, theCrazy Frog of Trotskyism.GERRY HEALYCRAZY FROG

Pallis was expelled from the SLL in 1960, and together withother former SLLers formed the Socialism Reaffirmed group, this group which soonbecame Solidarity, had close links to the French journal Socialisme ou Barbarie,and especially the ideas of its main theorist Cornelius Castoriadis, many ofwhose works Pallis translated into English (under the pseudonym Paul Cardan).The Solidarity group became known for a strong critique of the ‘trad’ left,both reformist and Leninist, as holding parallel elitist views of the role ofthe working class and that of the ‘Party’.‘We do not accept the view thatby itself the working class can only achieve a trade union consciousness. On thecontrary we believe that its conditions of life and its experiences inproduction constantly drive the working class to adopt priorities and values andto find methods of organisation which challenge the established social order andestablished pattern of thought. These responses are implicitly socialist. On theother hand, the working class is fragmented, dispossessed of the means ofcommunication, and its various sections are at different levels of awareness andconsciousness. The task of the revolutionary organisation is to help giveproletarian consciousness an explicitly socialist content, to give practicalassistance to workers in struggle, and to help those in different areas toexchange experiences and link up with one another.We do not see ourselves as yetanother leadership, but merely as an instrument of working class action. Thefunction of SOLIDARITY is to help all those who are in conflict with the presentauthoritarian social structure, both in industry and in society at large, togeneralise their experience, to make a total critique of their condition and ofits causes, and to develop the mass revolutionary consciousness necessary ifsociety is to be totally transformed.’From ‘As We See It’ first publishedin solidarity IV April 1967 reprinted in For Workers Power. Page 154 AKPress(Also available online see below)Solidarity stressed the need for ‘workersself management’ in industry; this was contrasted with the Leninist slogan ofworkers control;‘To manage is to initiate the decisions oneself. As asovereign person or collectively, in full knowledge of all the relevant facts.To control is to supervise, inspect or check decisions initiated by others.'Control' implies a limitation of sovereignty or, at best, a state of duality ofpower, wherein some people determine the objectives while others see that theappropriate means are used to achieve them. Historically, controversies aboutworkers control have tended to break out precisely in such conditions ofeconomic dual power.Like all forms of dual power, economic dual power isessentially unstable. It will evolve into a consolidation of bureaucratic power(with the working class exerting less and less of the control). Or it willevolve into workers' management. With the working class taking over allmanagerial functions.’From The Bolsheviks and Workers Control 1917 - 1921The State and Counter-revolution by M.Brinton first published as a book in 1970reprinted in full in ‘For Workers Power, selected writings of Maurice Brinton’.Page 294. (Also available online, see below for details.)Pallis explored aMarxism that was light years from the Puritanical killjoy attitude of much ofthe left in the 60s and 70s (and which still continues today) the Solidaritygroup introduced (and subjected to fierce criticism) the ideas of the Marxistpsychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to a British audience (The Irrational In Politics).Faced with the longest boom in history Castoriadis formulated a theory thatcapitalism had begun to overcome some of its tendencies toward crises, at theprice of increased bureaucratization and reduction of civil and politicalfreedom, this meant a convergence between western ‘Free Market’ capitalism andits Stalinist counterpart across the Iron Curtain. In the workplace;‘….(T)thousands of jobs and professions formerly requiring skill and training andoffering their occupants status and satisfaction have today been stripped oftheir specialized nature. Not only have they been reduced to the tedium andmonotonous grind of any factory job, but their operatives have been degraded tosimple executors of orders, as alienated in their work as any bench hand.Marxists would be better employed analyzing the implications of this importantchange in the social structure rather than waving their antiquated economicslide rules…’Introduction to Paul Cardan, The Meaning Of Socialism MauriceBrinton, For Workers Power page 61This meant that it was unlikely , as wasinsisted by Traditional Leninists, that the working class was going to be thrustinto mass poverty by a cataclysmic crash and that this would be the impetus fora upsurge in support for the revolutionary leadership. It was however in thestruggle within the workplace over the right to manage over capitalism attemptto dictate and control every facet of the worker life that would be the sparkpoint for further class struggles. This immediately smashes Lenin’s dictum thatthe workers left to themselves are only able to develop trades unionconsciousness, an idea that Pallis felt particular contempt.The return ofeconomic crises to the West in the 1970s and the later collapse of Bureaucraticstate capitalism in the old Stalinist empire cut a large chunk out ofCastoriadis’ basic theory, but the fact remains that despite the reappearance ofperiods of mass unemployment and the destruction of much of Britain industrialand manufacturing base the overall standard of living of the mass of workers HAScontinued to grow, just as at the same time Proletarianization has proceededrelentlessly.This introduction does not do justice to full range of MauriceBrinton/ Chris Pallis’ work, - as well as a Marxist he was also a highlyrespected neurologist, fuller obituaries from comrades who knew him can be foundhere http://libsoc.blogspot.com/2005/03/socialist-for-all-seasons-paul.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1444577,00.htmlI will finish this Brief introduction in traditional form with Chris Pallis’own words once again from For Workers Power;“….(We) will be labelled“Anarcho-Marxist” by those who like ready made tabs for their ideological wares.The cap fits insofar as we stand in a double line of fire, denounced asanarchists(by the Marxists) and as Marxists (by the anarchists). It is trueinsofar as we appeal to the libertarian ideals of some Marxists and to the need-clearly felt by some anarchists- for a self constant and modern ideology goingfurther than the slogan “Politics: Out!”. basically however we are ourselves andnothing more. We live here and now, not in Petrograd in 1917, nor in Barcelonain 1936. We have no gods not even revolutionary ones. Paraphrasing Marx(“philosophers have only interpreted the world. What is necessary is to changeit” ), we might say that “ revolutionaries have only interpreted Marx (orBakunin), what is necessary is to change them”.We are the product of thedegeneration of traditional politics and of the revolt of youth againstestablished society in an advanced industrial country in the second half of thetwentieth century. The aim of this book is to give both purpose and meaning tothis revolt and to merge it with the constant working class struggle for its ownemancipation”April 1965

Further Reading;The bestcollection of Chris Pallis’ work is ‘For Workers Power, selected writings ofMaurice Brinton’ Edited by David Goodway ISBN1-904859-07-0. Published by akpress http://www.akuk.com/Chris Pallis alsoappears (as martin Grainger, another of his pseudonyms) in David Widgery’s bookThe Left In Britain, Penguin books 1976 isbn 0 14 055.99 2 ; There are twopieces, an (edited) version of the solidarity pamphlet Paris: May 1968Andalso an article from The Newsletter, the paper of Healy’s SLL from 1958 ‘WeMarched against Britain’s Death Factory’Online, some texts are availablehere; http://www.af-north.org/solidarity_pamphlets.htmAnd here:http://www.libcom.org/

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISMWhat is basically wrong withcapitalism? Ask a number of socialists and you will get a number of differentanswers. These will depend on their vision of what socialism might be like andto what their ideas as to what political action is all about. Revolutionarylibertarian socialists see these things very differently from the trad ‘left’.This article is not an attempt to counterpoise two conceptions of socialism andpolitical action. It is an attempt to stress a facet of socialist thought thatis in danger of being forgotten.When one scratches beneath the surface,‘progressive’ capitalists, liberals, Labour reformists, ‘communist’macro-bureaucrats and Trotskyist mini-bureaucrats see all the evils ofcapitalism in much the same way. They all see them as primarily economic ills,flowing from a particular pattern of ownership of the means of production. WhenKhrushchev equated socialism with ‘more goulash for everyone’ he was voicing awidespread view. Innumerable quotations could be found to substantiate thisassertion.If you don’t believe that traditional socialists think in thisway, try suggesting to one of them that capitalism is beginning to solve someeconomic problems. He will immediately denounce you as having ’given up thestruggle for socialism’. He cannot grasp that slumps were a feature of societiesthat state capitalism had not sufficiently permeated and that they are notintrinsic to features of capitalist society. “No economic crisis” is, for thetraditional socialist, tantamount to “no crisis”. It is synonymous to“capitalism has solved its problems”. The traditional socialist feels insecure,as a socialist, if told that capitalism can solve this kind of problem, becausefor him this is the problem, par excellence, affecting capitalist society.The tradition ‘left today has a crude vision of man, of his aspirations andhis needs, a vision moulded by the rotten society in which we live. It has anarrow concept of class consciousness. For them class consciousness is primarilyan awareness of “non ownership”. They see the “social problem” being solved asthe majority of the population gain access to material wealth. All would bewell, they say or imply, if as a result of their capture of state power (and oftheir particular brand of planning) the masses could only be assured a higherlevel of consumption. “Socialism” is equated with full bellies. The filling ofthese bellies is seen as the fundamental task of the socialist revolution.Intimately related to this concept of man as essentially a producing andconsuming machine is the whole traditional left critique of laissez-fairecapitalism. Many on the left continue to believe that we live under this kind ofcapitalism and continue to criticize it because it is inefficient (in the domainof production) the whole of John Strachey’s writings prior to ww2 were dominatedby these conceptions. His ‘Why You Should Be a Socialist’ sold nearly a millioncopies- and yet the ideas of freedom or self management do not appear in it, aspart of the socialist objective. Many of the leaders of today’s left graduatedat this school, including the so called revolutionaries. Even the usual visionof communism “from each according to his ability to each according to hisneeds”, usually relates, in the minds of “Marxists”, to the division of the cakeand not at all to the relations to man with man and between man and hisenvironment.For the traditional socialist “raising the standard of living”is the main purpose of social change. Capitalism cannot any longer developproduction. (Anyone ever caught in a traffic jam, or in a working class shoppingarea on a Saturday afternoon, will find this a strange proposition.) It seems tobe of secondary importance to this kind of socialist that under moderncapitalism are brutalised at work, manipulated in consumption and in leisure,their intellectual capacity stunted or their taste corrupted by a commercialculture. One must be “soft”, it is implied, if one considers the systematicdestruction to be worth a big song and dance. Those who talk of socialistobjectives as being freedom in production (as well as out of it) are dismissedas Utopians.Were it not that misrepresentation is now an established way oflife on the “left”, it would seem unnecessary to stress that as long as millionsof the world’s population have insufficient food and clothing, the satisfactionof basic material needs must be an essential part of the socialist programme(and in fact of any social programme whatsoever, which does not extol thevirtues of poverty.) The point is that by concentrating on this aspect of thecritique of capitalism the propaganda of the traditional left deprives itself ofone of the most telling weapons of socialist criticism, namely an exposure ofwhat capitalism does to people, particularly in countries where basic needs havebeen met. And whether Guevarist or Maoist friends like it or not, it is in thesecountries, where there is a proletariat, that the socialist future of mankindwill be decided.This particular emphasis in the propaganda of thetraditional organisations is not accidental. When they talk of increasingproduction in order to increase consumption, reformists and bureaucrats of onekind or another feel on fairly safe ground. Despite the nonsense talked by many“Marxists” about “stagnation of the productive forces” bureaucratic capitalism(of both eastern and western types) can develop the means of production, hasdone so and is still doing so on a gigantic scale. It can provide (andhistorically has provided) a gradual increase in the standard of living- at thecost of intensified exploitation during the working day. It can provide a fairlysteady level of employment. So can a well run gaol. But on the ground of thesubjection of man to institutions that are not of his choice, the socialistcritiques of capitalism and bureaucratic society retain all their validity. Infact, their validity increases as modern society simultaneously solves theproblem of mass poverty and becomes increasingly bureaucratic and totalitarian.It will probably be objected that some offbeat trends in the “Marxist”movement do indulge in this wider kind of critique and in a sense this is true.Yet whatever the institutions criticized, their critique usually hinges,ultimately, on the notion of the unequal distribution of wealth. It consists onvariations on the theme of the corrupting influence of money. When they talk forinstance of the sexual problem or of the family, they talk of the economicbarriers to sexual emancipation, of hunger pushing women to prostitution, of thepoor young girl sold to the wealthy man, from the domestic tragedies resultingfrom poverty. When they denounce what capitalism does to culture they will do soin terms of the obstacles that economic needs puts in the way of talent, or theywill talk of the venality of artists. All this is undoubtedly of greatimportance. But it is only the surface of the problem. Those socialists who canonly speak in these terms see man in much less than his full stature. They seehim as the bourgeoisie does, as a consumer (of food, of wealth, of culture,etc.) The essential, however, for man is fulfilling himself. Socialism must giveman an opportunity to create, not simply in the economic field, but in allfields of human endeavour. Let the cynics smile and pretend that all this ispetty bourgeois utopianism.” The problem,” Marx said, “is to organise the worldin such a manner that man experiences in it the truly human, becomes accustomedto experience himself as a man to assert his true individuality”.Conflictsin class society do not simply result from inequalities of distribution, or flowfrom a given division of the surplus value, itself a result of a given patternof ownership of the means of production. Exploitation does not only result in alimitation of consumption for the many and financial enrichment for the few.Equally important are the attempts by both private and bureaucratic capitalismto limit- and finally suppress altogether- the human role of man in theproductive process. Man is increasingly expropriated from the very management ofhis own acts. He is increasingly alienated during all his activities, whetherindividual or collective. By subjecting man to the machine- and through themachine to an abstract and hostile will- class society deprives man of the realpurpose of human endeavour, which is the constant, conscious transformation ofthe world around him. That men resist this process (and that their resistanceimplicitly raises the question of self management0 is as much a driving force inthe class struggle as the conflict over the distribution of the surplus. Marxdoubtless had these ideas in mind when he wrote that the proletariat “regardsits independence and sense of personal dignity as more important than its dailybread”.Class society naturally inhibits the natural tendency of man tofulfil himself in the objects of his activity. In every country of the worldthis state of affairs is experienced day after day by the working class as anabsolute misfortune, as a permanent mutilation. It results in a constantstruggle at the most fundamental level of production: that of conscious, willingparticipation. The producers utterly reject (and quite rightly so) a system ofproduction which is imposed upon them from above and in which they are merecogs. Their inventiveness, their creative ability, their ingenuity, theirinitiative may be shown in their own lives, but are certainly not shown inproduction. In the factory these aptitudes may be used, but to quite differentand “non productive” ends! They manifest themselves in a resistance toproduction. This result in a constant and fantastic waste compared with whichthe wastage resulting from capitalist crises or capitalist wars is really quitetrivial!Alienation in capitalist society is not simply economic. Itmanifests itself in many other ways. The conflict in production does not“create” or “determine” secondary conflicts in other fields. Class dominationmanifests itself in all fields, at one at the same time. Its effects could nototherwise be understood. Exploitation, for instance, can only occur if theproducers are expropriated from the management of production. But thispresupposes that they are partly expropriated from the capacities ofmanagement-in other words from culture. And this cultural expropriation in turnreinforces those in command of the productive machine. Similarly a society inwhich relations between people are based on domination will maintainauthoritarian attitudes in relation to sex and to education, attitudes creatingdeep inhibitions, frustrations and much unhappiness. The conflicts engendered byclass society take place in every one of us. A social structure containing deepantagonisms reproduces these antagonisms in variable degrees in each of theindividuals comprising it.There is a profound dialectical interrelationshipbetween the social structure of a society and the attitudes and behaviour of itsmembers. “The dominant ideas of each epoch are the ideas of the ruling class”,whatever modern sociologists may think. Class society can only exist to theextent that it succeeds in imposing a widespread acceptance of its norms. Fromhis earliest days man is subjected to constant pressures designed to mould hisviews in relation to work, to culture, to leisure, to thought itself. Thesepressures tend to deprive him of the natural enjoyment of his activity and evento make him accept this deprivation as something intrinsically good. In the pastthis job was assisted by religion. Today the same role is played by “socialist”and “communist” ideologies. But man is not infinitely malleable. This is why thebureaucratic project will become unstuck. Its objectives are in conflict withfundamental human aspirations.We mention all this only to underline theessential identity of relations of domination- whether they manifest themselvesin the capitalist factory, in the patriarchal family, in the authoritarianupbringing of children or in “aristocratic” cultural traditions. We also mentionthese facts to show the socialist revolution will have to take all these fieldswithin its compass, and immediately, not in some far distant future. Therevolution must of course start with the overthrow of the exploiting class andwith the institution of workers management of production. But it willimmediately have to tackle the reconstruction of social life in all its aspects.If it does not, it will surely die.SOLIDARITY, V, 6 (DECEMBER 1968)

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